HIPPO-PATHOLOGY. 
5 
so obnoxious to one as they are to the other, more would certainly 
die from the latter than from the former. The predominance of 
pulmonary disease, among men as well as horses, is to be ascribed 
to the variableness of the climate we inhabit, and the continual 
vicissitudes we are all in consequence necessarily exposed to; 
against the effects of which it has been found next to impossible 
to protect our own bodies, much less those of our horses. 
The proportion of deaths in pulmonary affections is also to be 
elicited from an adjustment of these computations: it appears in 
the ratio of 77 to 300, or a fraction more than one in four*. 
Treatment of internal disease. — The foregoing practical ob- 
servations have been submitted with a view of throwing some 
light on the causes of disease in general, at least of those dis- 
eases to which the horse appears most obnoxious ; the brief 
remarks that follow are intended to elucidate their treatment. 
Reasoning on general physiological principles, one would suppose 
that, in an animal in whom the pulse in health ranges under 40, the 
respiration is proportionately slow, and in whom the functions of 
the alimentary canal are so tardily carried on that we cannot 
insure the operation of a common purge under twenty-four hours, 
the progress of disease would likewise be slow ; so far, however, 
is this from being the case, that there is no animal, probably, 
in which acute disease in general makes such fatal havoc in so 
short a time as in the horse. An attack of pneumonia has been 
known to kill in less than twenty-four hours : an enteritic paroxysm 
in half that time. Changes of structure are in like manner rapid 
in taking place ; and there is a prevailing disposition in the con- 
stitution of the horse to convert that which was originally cellular 
or vascular in its composition into a solid substance; and that 
which was uniformly solid, but still pliable and elastic in its 
nature, into a hard osseous substance, no longer flexible or even im- 
pressible. These preliminary hints will, perhaps, suffice to evince 
the absolute necessity there is, in treating the acute disorders of 
horses, to at once have recourse to 
Remedies prompt to act and efficacious when they do act . — 
This property it is which places blood-letting at the top of our 
therapeutic catalogue, and at the same time renders it a measure 
to which we are in the habit of resorting so often, even in our ordi- 
nary course of practice. A surgeon can vomit his patient almost as 
soon as the emetic is taken ; he can effect purgation in a couple 
or three hours : the veterinarian can accomplish neither ; — at least, 
the one not at all, and the other but at a period when his patient 
* The proportion of deaths to recoveries is probably too highly rated here, 
it being well known that cases of slight or incipient pulmonary disorder are 
very apt to become registered under the head of “ Fever.” 
